On Wednesday April 4, MSNBC host Lawrence O\u2019Donnell remarked that while Judaism and Christianity are thousands of years in the making, Mormonism, in stark contrast, is a mere 182 years old.\u00a0 Mormonism was \u201ccreated\u201d in 1830 \u201cby a guy in upstate New York\u201d who got \u201ccaught having sex\u201d with his \u201cmaid\u201d and then \u201cexplained to his wife that God told him do it.\u201d\u00a0 Alluding to Mormonism\u2019s historically polygamous character, O\u2019Donnell made sure to mention that Joseph Smith\u2014the man who \u201cinvented\u201d Mormonism\u2014eventually went on to accumulate 48 wives. \u00a0<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t the first time that O\u2019Donnell has sought to discredit Mitt Romney by assailing the former Massachusetts Governor\u2019s faith.\u00a0 In 2007, he charged Mormonism with being a \u201cracist faith.\u201d\u00a0 O\u2019Donnell states: \u201cAs of 1978 it was an officially racist faith, and for political convenience in 1978, it switched.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those Republicans who suspect that President Obama and his legions of supporters in the media are going to attack Romney by attacking his faith are correct.\u00a0 Yet it is crucial that they know exactly why <\/em>this will be their strategy of choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n For whatever reasons (we needn\u2019t get into them here), Republicans and establishment \u201cconservatives\u201d refuse\u2014adamantly, steadfastly, refuse<\/em>\u2014to acknowledge two facts about their rivals.\u00a0 First, they refuse to concede how <\/em>Democratic leftists think. Second, they refuse to recognize that unless they make this first concession, they will lose<\/em>.<\/p>\n If Romney, the GOP nominee, wasn\u2019t a Mormon, Democrats wouldn\u2019t dream of making this campaign about religion.\u00a0 Republicans must grasp this. They must reckon with the truth that Mormonism, from the leftist\u2019s perspective, is more vulnerable a target than any and every other belief system save for, say, Neo-Nazism. \u00a0<\/p>\n O\u2019Donnell forecasts the lines along which the left is going to come after Romney.<\/p>\n That Joseph Smith was a polygamist, and that the logic of Mormon theology implies the need for polygamy, permit leftists to depict Mormonism as an incorrigibly \u201csexist<\/em>\u201d <\/em>faith.\u00a0 And that blacks had long been denied, not membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but access to its priesthood, exposes it to the left\u2019s charge of \u201cracism<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Shortly after the presidential election, Californians successfully voted against the legalization of so-called \u201cgay marriage.\u201d\u00a0 In response, leftists launched a full frontal assault against (white) Mormons\u2014though, unsurprisingly, not against the blacks and Hispanics without whom the referendum would have crashed in defeat.<\/p>\n Rest assured, this incident will be among those upon which Romney\u2019s critics will seize in depicting his faith as \u201chomophobic<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n So Romney will effortlessly be portrayed by Obama and company as a \u201cracist, sexist, homophobe.\u201d\u00a0 But this is not all.\u00a0<\/p>\n For all of the leftist\u2019s railing against \u201cstereotypes,\u201d there is no one who trades in stereotypes more so than he.\u00a0 To the last detail, Romney fits, or can be made to fit, the worst of the leftist\u2019s stereotypes: Romney\u2019s fabulous wealth and wholesome looking family renders him the poster boy for the pre-1960\u2019s bourgeoisie, a ruling class ridden with hypocrisy, self-centeredness, and a cruel indifference to the suffering of blacks, women, and other minorities.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the leftist\u2019s imagination, Americawas a cauldron of racial and gender oppression up until the Enlightenment of the 1960\u2019s.\u00a0 This explains why he despises \u201c1950\u2019s America,\u201d the United Statesas it is portrayed in such television classics as Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, <\/em>and Leave it to Beaver.\u00a0 <\/em>Such shows offer an idealized presentation of the all-American family.\u00a0 Yet given that this ideal co-existed with and, from the leftist\u2019s point of view, actually facilitated<\/em> \u201cMcCarthyism\u201d and other forms of oppression, the ideal deconstructs under its own weight.\u00a0 And in so doing, the white, heterosexual, bourgeoisie 1950\u2019s family is revealed to be the Enemy of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful\u2014i.e. the Politically Correct.\u00a0<\/p>\n Romney\u2019s is the face of the Enemy.\u00a0 Because of his membership in a little understood and unpopular church, there is no Republican candidate who is more legible for this distinction.\u00a0 Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are Roman Catholics, and if ever there was a faith that lends itself to being interpreted by the left as \u201csexist\u201d and \u201chomophobic,\u201d it is Catholicism; but too many American voters are Roman Catholic.\u00a0 Similarly, Ron Paul is a Protestant, but the denomination to which he belongs, though posing a similar threat to the leftist\u2019s sacred cows, is nevertheless a mainline Christian faith. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Republicans had better prepare for this line of attack, for it is already under way.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Wednesday April 4, MSNBC host Lawrence O\u2019Donnell remarked that while Judaism and Christianity are thousands of years in the making, Mormonism, in stark contrast, is a mere 182 years old.\u00a0 Mormonism was \u201ccreated\u201d in 1830 \u201cby a guy in upstate New York\u201d who got \u201ccaught having sex\u201d with his \u201cmaid\u201d and then \u201cexplained to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n